


The Long Road Ahead

by darlingargents



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Dreams and Nightmares, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, M/M, Mike Goes to Florida, Post-IT Chapter Two (2019), Road Trips, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:08:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22395295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darlingargents/pseuds/darlingargents
Summary: Mike drives to Florida.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon
Comments: 25
Kudos: 91
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	The Long Road Ahead

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Highsmith (quimtessence)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quimtessence/gifts).



The nightmares don’t stop.

Mike had thought they might. He’s had them pretty much every night since his parents died, and there’d been a part of him that thought, when they killed It, it would be enough. That he’d be able to rest, really rest.

Of course it’s not that simple.

He gets out of Derry, though, and that’s a good first step.

*

He’s always wanted to go to Florida, so he does. He drives all the way there, watching the landscapes change around him. He’s been outside Derry before, briefly; he’s been to Bangor and Portland and, once, to Boston for a weekend. It was overwhelming, almost terrifying, and he’d spent the whole time terrified he’d lose his memories and not make it back.

He had, of course, but now he doesn’t want to go back. He keeps driving, and the memories don’t fade. The cities are bigger than he’s ever seen before. He sits in traffic jams with larger populations than the town he spent almost forty years in.

It’s deep into July when he finally crosses the state line into Florida. He pulls over on the side of the highway and breathes in the humid, hot air.

It’s not pleasant, exactly, but it’s so very different that it’s almost wonderful. He feels awash in possibilities. He could go anywhere, do anything. He’s free.

He gets back into the car, planning to get back to driving, but finds himself breaking down crying behind the wheel. It’s overwhelming. He’s spent his whole life surrounded by darkness and cruelty and evil, and now he can just… leave.

That night, in his motel room, he watches fuzzy local news and falls asleep to the rattling of the ancient air-con unit. The dreams come, but they’re quiet, as distant as the town they came from.

*

The buzzing of his phone wakes him in the late morning. He’s overslept, but that’s okay; he grapples for his phone. It stops ringing before he manages to get it, and he sees MISSED CALL — BILL DENBROUGH on the screen.

Half-asleep, he returns the call.

“Oh, hi,” Bill says. “Sorry — I was just calling to check in. See how things are going.”

“Fine.” Mike sits up, shaking off the tiredness clinging to him like cobwebs. He’s been tired for years; no wonder he’s been sleeping so much since he left Derry. All the trauma is leaving him at once. His body doesn’t know what to do when it’s not being powered by adrenaline. “I got to Florida yesterday.”

“Did you? You always wanted to go, right? How is it?”

“Hot,” he says, and Bill laughs. There’s something wonderful about the sound of Bill’s laugh, that warms him right to the core. He smiles, knowing no one will see it. “But it’s nice to be somewhere different.”

“I bet. I’ve been writing a lot. It’s really nice to be back in the flow of things.”

“Is it?” The conversation keeps going, and before Mike knows it, they’ve been talking for almost half an hour. He glances at the clock and realizes he needs to check out — and get some breakfast, going by his rumbling stomach — so he reluctantly says goodbye and hangs up.

He’s on the road later than planned, eating a fast-food breakfast as he drives south. Since it’s the middle of the day, the traffic is, at least, not as horrendous as it has been. (He never thought he’d miss anything about Derry, but the lack of traffic is definitely appealing in retrospect.) His car is old and half broken down, and he has to put the air-con to its highest setting to feel anything more than a soft wave of lukewarm air; he cranks down the window and puts an arm out under the sun.

He feels young and carefree. In the glaring sun, the swampy air clouded with humidity and engine exhaust, he’s never felt further away from Derry.

He makes it to a beach town by late afternoon, and checks into a motel on the waterfront. As the afternoon stretches into evening, he takes a blanket from his car and lays it out on the sand, and he’s on the wrong coast to watch the sunset, but he watches the rippling waves reflecting the sun until it finally fades away.

His phone rings again as it’s growing dark. Bill again. He answers, wiping away the tears he hadn’t realized were falling.

“Will you be in Miami soon?” Bill says by way of introduction. Mike starts to gather his things, phone to his ear.

“Probably by tomorrow. Why?”

“I’m booking a flight.”

Mike is silent for a moment, folding up the blanket, not sure what to say. The feeling in his chest is warm and overwhelming and dangerous—

“Why?” he manages.

“I can’t,” Bill starts, and stops. Mike realizes his voice is scratchy, hurt. He wants to reach through the phone and fix whatever’s hurting him. It reminds him of spending all those years watching the others from a distance, watching as their lives grew and flourished and he was left behind. Always watching and never touching or saying a word.

“What’s wrong?” Mike says, instead of saying… all of that.

“You know about the divorce,” Bill says quietly.

“Yeah.” Even if he hadn’t been following it, he would’ve known. It’s minor celebrity news all over social media. Bill’s ex has been quiet about the reasons, but the media loves to speculate.

“I can’t stay here,” Bill says. “It’s so — I don’t like being alone in the house. I keep having nightmares. And I—”

He cuts himself off with a choked sound like holding back a sob. Mike’s chest hurts.

“Do you want to be alone?” Bill asks when he’s composed himself.

Mike’s packed the blanket back into his car. He’s sitting in the driver’s seat and looking at the mountain of fast-food wrappers and the remnants of dozens of coffees in the cupholders.

It’s a lonely sight.

“No,” he says. “No, I don’t. I’ll pick you up at the airport. Just tell me when your flight gets in.”

Bill laughs, relieved and covering up a sob. “Thanks, man.”

“I’m always gonna be here for you,” Mike says, and he believes it. His last, most important promise gave him purpose his entire adult life. This promise gives him something, even if it’s not the same.

They keep talking as Mike gets back to his motel room and orders a pizza for dinner. Eventually Bill realizes just how late it is in Mike’s timezone and lets him go, promising to send his flight information as soon as he gets it. It’s almost midnight, and Mike falls asleep to more rattling air-con and the faint sounds of the ocean beyond.

*

His dreams that night have clowns and teeth and Bill’s smile in an eyeless face and then it gets—

Well, he wakes up in a cold sweat and an uncomfortable position in the middle of the night. It’s one of his strangest dreams, he’s fairly certain, as he takes care of it and goes back to sleep.

*

It’s a weekend and the weather looks ready to storm, so the traffic isn’t quite as horrendous the next day. The rest of the pizza takes his passenger seat on the drive to Miami. The weather goes from cloudy with a faintly green tinge to the air to rainy to violently windy as Mike goes further south, never really cooling down. It’s pouring rain when Mike gets to the Miami airport and navigates the maze of concrete to find the pickup spot, half an hour before Bill’s flight is due to get in.

He darts out into the hot, tropical rain to dump his road-trip garbage (he winces at the sheer amount as he does so) and then all he can do is wait, and think, as the fat, heavy raindrops patter down on the roof of his car. The metal is so thin that the rain is practically deafening, and it’s not the best environment for deep thought, which he appreciates. If he overthinks this, he might end up running away.

The half-hour slips by, and his phone buzzes with a text. _Just waiting for my bag_. His heart pounds frantically and he turns off the phone, dropping it into the cupholder.

Ten minutes later, there’s a knock on his window, and he jumps. Bill smiles down at him, and gestures at the trunk. Mike unlocks it, and he drops his bag in and comes around the passenger side.

“Hey, man,” he says, and Mike smiles, feeling like a ton of weight has been lifted off his shoulders. “Let’s go”

They drive for the next hour for a hotel Bill chose. When they arrive, Mike has a minor heart attack at just how expensive it looks — high-end and fancy, on the beachfront. Bill notices his panic and tells him in no uncertain terms that it’s his treat.

“Think of it as payback,” he says as they unload their bags and the valet takes Mike's keys. “You drove to Miami to pick me up. I’m thanking you.”

Mike looks up at the grandeur of the entrance hall, and swallows back his discomfort. “Sure. Okay.”

*

The room itself is gorgeous. Two bedrooms, a living room with a dining table, a massive bathroom with a jacuzzi tub overlooking the ocean. There’s fancy white robes hanging off the closet doors, mints on the pillows — about two million pillows, from the looks of it — and the whole place somehow smells like roses.

Mike doesn’t think a place this nice exists in all of Derry. It’s all he can do not to immediately collapse on the bed and sleep for the next twenty hours in pure comfort.

But he and Bill unpack, and have a room service dinner, and end up watching a _Project Runway_ rerun — Bev’s season, as it turns out. Bill mentions, offhand near the end, that he watched the whole season with his wife, even though he’d never watched the show before or after.

“I guess you guys remembered each other,” Mike says. It feels like a spike in his chest, thinking of all the years he felt so totally alone as they went about their lives without him. “At least subconsciously.”

“Yeah.” The credits start to roll, and Bill looks down at his beer, expression closed off. “A lot of them have read my books, too.”

 _I’ve read all of your books_ is absolutely the wrong thing to say, so Mike doesn’t say it. He lets Bill sit in the strange sadness, the grief for the memories he lost. It’s funny — he’s always thought, a little bitterly, how lucky the others were to forget Derry and the horrors within. But there’s a kind of loss there, too — Bill forgot his brother. Bev forgot the boys she loved. They all forgot the best friendships of their lives.

Bill turns the TV off with a click, and Mike is jolted out of his thoughts. “Goodnight,” Bill says softly, and vanishes into his room, the door clicking closed behind him, a final and impenetrable barrier.

*

The nightmares are worse tonight, which Mike didn’t expect.

He wakes up over and over, heart racing, a scream dying in his throat, the horrors slipping away before he can remember them. He rolls over and falls back asleep, and wakes up half an hour later the same way.

At four in the morning, he gives up on a full night of sleep and goes out to the living room. He puts the TV on low and watches _Chopped_.

Fifteen minutes later, Bill’s door opens, and he comes out, looking just as exhausted as Mike feels. He mutes the TV and says, “Can’t sleep?”

“Nightmares, yeah.” Bill sits down across from him. He’s not wearing a shirt, same as Mike, and Mike can’t stop staring at the muscles moving in his chest as he leans back and rubs his eyes. “They haven’t been this bad in a while.”

“Yeah.” Mike turns the TV back on, still quiet, and they both watch until the episode finishes. It’s five in the morning and the first light of the day is starting to brighten the room.

“I’m going back to bed,” Bill says, standing, and then he pauses. “Come with me.”

“What?”

“Maybe we won’t dream if we’re together.” Bill runs a hand over his jaw, and yawns. “Come on. Just try it.”

Mike wants to say no. He’s going to say no and go back to his room and imagine he can hear Bill’s breathing through all the walls.

He nods.

The bed is big enough that they really don’t have to touch, but once they’ve gotten comfortable, Mike finds his hand sliding to the middle of the bed. It meets Bill’s, and without discussion, they clasp hands, and face sleep together.

*

When Mike wakes up, sunlight is streaming through the room, and Bill is in his arms. He feels completely rested. He hasn’t dreamed at all.

Bill’s eyes open, slowly, and he smiles. Their faces are inches apart.

Mike doesn’t know who moves first, but a moment later, they’re kissing. Soft and hesitant at first, and getting more confident as the other doesn’t push them away. It feels good — it feels wonderful, like the first really good thing that’s happened to Mike in his adulthood.

He kisses Bill and feels like maybe, just maybe, the nightmares will stay gone.

*

The next week passes like a dream. (A good dream, for once.) They go to the beach, and the hotel pool, and at night they explore each other’s bodies and drink only enough to get mildly buzzed. Mike feels like a teenager again, and he thinks Bill feels the same.

It’s not all sunshine and roses, though. Bill spends a lot of time rejecting calls on his phone with a glare, and sometimes he withdraws and wants to be alone. Mike lets him have his space, and doesn’t press him. He thinks Bill has enough to deal with without Mike interrogating him. And while the nightmares have stopped for both of them whenever they’re in bed together, there’s still the memories that come up at the most inconvenient times. But it’s better than anything Mike’s ever been through before, and he never wants it to end.

At the end of the week, Mike’s starting to get tired of the humidity. In bed with Bill, he stares at the ceiling and wonders how to bring it up.

Bill can read him, he’s pretty sure, and he can read Bill as well. Bill closes his laptop and touches Mike’s biceps, a comforting pressure. “What’s up?” he asks. He’s been writing quite a bit; Mike’s surprised by how quickly he got used to the frantic clicking of keys late into the night.

He sighs. “We can’t hide here forever.”

Bill laughs softly, and stands, stretching. Mike watches the flexing muscles on his back without shame or guilt. He picks up his laptop and crosses the room to the desk to plug it in for the night. He returns to bed and looks at Mike, a mock-serious expression on his face.

“No, we can’t,” he says. “Where do you want to go?”

 _Anywhere_ , he thinks, _if I can stay with you._

“Are you going home?” he says instead. Bill just looks at him, and sighs.

“I’m going,” he says, “wherever you go.” Mike’s heart leaps in his chest, against his will.

He doesn’t want to turn this into something it’s not — he doesn’t want to get his heart broken when he’s left behind. But maybe he’s wrong — maybe it’s not destined to end. Maybe, this time, he won’t need to be left alone.

“I’ve always wanted to see LA,” he says, and it’s the most freeing thing he’s ever said. Bill smiles, and leans in for a chaste, soft kiss. It’s possibly the best feeling Mike’s ever had, the warmth in his chest and love in his heart.

“Then let’s see LA,” Bill says. “Ready to sleep?”

“Ready.”

Bill turns off the light, and Mike falls asleep in minutes. And he doesn’t have one nightmare.


End file.
